46 Responses

Craig: I don't see how Christian's living in London implies that he supports the undemocratic UK electoral system?

I don't know that he does, but one would think the United Kingdom is rather unstable moral high ground to affect any kind of political or moral superiority over those dumb fascist Yanks. Get back to me when Gordon Brown is elected Prime Minister in his own right, someone - anyone - is prosecuted over the 'cash for peerages' scandal, and election turn-out increases for once.

With regards to people not knowing what political acronyms are, I wonder how much of it is sometimes being put on the spot.I was sitting here going "I'm sure I know what STV stands for ..." until a very quiet voice from the back of my brain whispered "..single transferrable vote", which I'm still not absolutely convinced is right.

Sometimes I think people would rather plead ignorance than be wrong... especially in public

Aside from Winston - and remember he was around a looooong time before MMP - I think MMP has worked pretty well. Parties have negotiated confidence and supply over key issues, such as Kiwibank, Buy NZ Made campaign etc, and whether you think they're daft or not, at least some proportion of the people agreed with and voted for those policies. The fact that MMP is German, and was devised to stop someone like Hitler coming to power again, doesn't make it a bad thing does it?

If we drop MMP, it won't be to bring in STV. STV was IMHO always the better system, but the MMP pushers had the jump on the campaign, and it became FPP vs MMP, not FPP vs another system. If we dump it, people aren't going to go "fuck, might as well have a crack at another system I have no idea about".

I'm interested to know how much of the Nats push for the BINDING referendum is pandering to the perceived public appetite, and how much of it is because they too want to return to the days of unbridled power with only 30% of the vote.

Well, by definition even under MMP the electorate votes of a hell of a lot of people "count for squat" -- because they're either invalid, or cast for unsuccessful candidates. In my own electorate of North Shore - one of the safer National-held seats - 14,453 (or 38.72%) of the electorate vote was 'wasted'. In Otaki, the "wasted" vote was 21,055 - or 54.53%.

Yes but luckily there's this whole other vote, of which 90%-ish all count. Which would be about twice any FPP campaign.

I'd suggest one improvement to MMP would be abolish dual voting, so one's party vote went to the party of the chosen electorate candidate. With maybe a reverse threshold as well (so an electorate candidate would have to get 5% of the national vote as well as a majority in the seat to be elected).

Or, more radically, have only list MPs.

Or, to get complex, a system of regional lists with the number of elected MPs being corrected to achieve proportionality.

I'd suggest one improvement to MMP would be abolish dual voting, so one's party vote went to the party of the chosen electorate candidate.

No, no and again, no. It would for one thing kill the independent candidate stone dead for all time. All the minor parties would also disappear overnight. It would effectively disenfranchise a lot of people. Under MMP if you think the candidate for your chosen party is a dickhead you can vote for someone else yet still support 'your' party and vice versa.

Here in Scotland, despite vowing never to vote Labour again (Iraq), I gave a personal vote to a Labour chappie in our Scottish Parliament electorate because of his principled stand against and voted for another party in the party vote. Your system removes that flexibility entirely and would in effect turn electorate candidates into list members.

I'd hate to lose MMP go, with the ability to vote party and candidate, having now lived in the UK for a bit. The idea that governments can rise or fall based on a few dozen electorates and that the rest can go to hang seems a silly basis for electoral selection. However I guess with the current polls and Glasgow East / Crewe several hundred electorates may be at risk that usually wouldn't be.

But the very idea that because my seat is a rather safe Tory seat (and the local rep seems well enough) that I effectively sit this one out is a little repugnant after voting in NZ. I might well want the Tories in power, or the Lib Dems to gain a couple more seats, or the UKIP to bring us out of Europe (lol) but if I vote for anyone but the former my vote is going to be just a symbol and nothing more.

I'd suggest one improvement to MMP would be abolish dual voting, so one's party vote went to the party of the chosen electorate candidate.

Hell NO! I'll be voting for my National electorate puppet (I think it's Richard Worthless again) this year, because I live in Epsom and it's either swallow that fish or waste my vote, and contribute to Rodders (and by extension Act) possibly getting into Parliament.However, I have no desire to see National in power. Keeping Act out is one way of trying to ensure that, but it doesn't mean I want them to get my party vote too. Under your plan, I'd lose the ability to try and keep both National and Act out because voting one way on one vote would automatically cast my other vote the same way.

Rodgerd, selectively editing my words to make them look like I didn't say what you did is dishonest in the extreme.

Besides you completely missed the point, while it is true that under FPP you could get into power on 35% ish of the vote, the 35% who did vote for the govt got the govt they voted for. Whereas under MMP you vote for a party and they may be in govt but constrained/pushed by coalition partners you didn't vote for. I'm sure Labour voters didn't vote in favour of Winston Peters as Minister for External Affairs.

While I completely understand why you'd do that Matthew, isn't it sad that we have to think like that, rather than actually voting for the candidate we'd like to see win, no matter what their chances?

Anyway, if I lived there I'd probably vote for Rodney simply because of the colour he contributes to the political landscape. As compared to say, Richard Worth (who tried to be my friend on Facebook the other day...ew). But of course that's just my opinion, and I can see many many reasons why you'd vote the way you do.

Well, Fletch, we don't vote for coalitions either - no matter how hard the punditocracy try to game 'em before hand.

Well in some elections you do to an extent, if the parties have declared them beforehand - '99 Labour and Greens for example.

But under FPP you don't vote for parties either, you vote for a candidate and just know that they're a member of a party. So technically, in the one FPP post election that I voted for, the country got at most about 0.5% or so of what anyone voted for.